Where (18 page)

It is in this cold, intensely physical period of stasis, confined in a tight space with Rawson Steele, who is a stranger to her in spite of shared history, that she senses Davy— nothing they said— just a physical memory of the two of them, body on body, Merrill and her lover back when they were at their best, indestructible, locked together as though nothing could change or even threaten what they thought they had.

In spite of the context or perhaps because of it— Rawson Steele,
this close
— sense memory warms her in the inevitable way, and this is both sweet and tremendously sad. Without being aware of it, she slips into the zone. Sitting with her head bent and her hands clamped between her knees, she hears, frames and re-frames and rehearses certain soft words she will say to make things right, when she and Davy … If.

He says what you say. “Are you OK?”

“What?” She snaps back into herself, blinking.

It's too dim in here for him to see her clearly, but his tone changes. “Was it good for you?”

Is he laughing at me?
Anger drives her to her feet.

“Sit down. You can't go out right now.”

“The hell I can't.”

“We can't.” Standing, he fills the carton. “This happens every night. We have to lay low until it's over. The sweep. Now, shut up and sit down.”

“Why?” They face off in a collision of wills, Merrill with her fists bunched to fight, or wring some truth from him. It's like confronting a large, intelligent dog; you don't know whether he's trying to protect you or what. Exasperated, she backs into the Styrofoam cooler and sits. Steele moves back into place and drops to his haunches as though equalizing their positions, but he's not about to answer. In the end, Merrill breaks the long silence, “OK. What sweep?”

“Believe me, you don't want to be out there. Let me put it another way. If you get picked up, I can't help you.”

This raises more questions, but she's too rattled to ask him who or what sweeps the installation or what foreign bodies it sweeps away or why a sweeper is needed at all in this relentlessly pristine trap. Brooding, she rehearses questions while Steele sits patiently, listening for something Merrill won't recognize and may not be able to hear.

Then she does. The whirr is just loud enough to tell her that something huge is passing. She catches a glint of light reflected in its metal flank— just a flash, seen through a crack created by the monstrous instrument or machine as it nudges Steele's makeshift shelter, veers around the foreign object and glides on. Merrill's mind does that thing it does when things get too intense: she flashes on an image she knows— the Roomba she bought Father, as though a blind vacuum cleaner could make a dent in the dirt accumulating in the house she fled.

As the sound recedes she collects herself; she has to leave! Before she can start up, Steele brings her down with one hand, not the way Father would, not like Davy. “No.” He lets go at once, but the warmth of his hand imprints her. “Not until they've swept the perimeter. Stay. They're almost done.”

How do you know?

They face off in silence. Finally, he says offhand: “We can't go yet, but it's OK to talk.”

By this time there are so many issues boiling up, pressing questions backed up and waiting, that they fill her throat and she can't speak. When she manages to cough one up, of all the answers she can't get and needs to know, what comes to the top isn't what she intended. It's not what she wants at all.

She needs to stop, rethink, but at these close quarters and in this dim light, this bothers her the most. It comes out with such force that as it explodes between them, she notes Steele's immediate, reflexive flinch:

“What were you digging for?”

 

19

Ned

Dawn

Fuck, shit. Crap, shitass son of a bastard bitch, fucking fuckface and every other pissed-off combo I'm too messed up to get back right now, this totally blows. I was up all night but there's a whole chunk of it that I can't remember. What's up with that? Do they gas us nights, or pipe in worse things that we don't know about, or did I just slag off and accidentally take a nap and they came back and left all over again while I was knocked out?

Whatever, Merrill, wherever you are. Whatevs.

I'm awake now, shit, it's almost light out and the only person here is me. Where the fuck are they? Rawson told me, sit tight and he'd come back and get me, but it's been forever and there's no sign. My big sister just up and took off with my new best friend, the only one I have in this rotten hole, if he really is my friend, which, I am beginning to wonder.

If we were real friends he'd be back by now.

And there's nothing to eat! Merrill's crap white fridge in her dead white kitchen is dead empty, I looked. No leftovers, not even noshies like you serve with drinks, plus there's nothing in the dumbwaiter, what's up with that? Does their searchbot scope all our houses at night and they just know, or did she leave out a note, like, DON'T BOTHER? What was she thinking? I could starve to death and she wouldn't give a crap.

If Merrill cared she would be back by now just like she promised. Yeah, right.

Like Merrill ever keeps her promises, like the ones she made the night she left home for good, with me still in it. OK, she did promise that Patrice would live in and keep care of me, Mer paid time and a half out of her college fund to make it happen, but it didn't last. After a while, Patrice couldn't hack it. Too much Father and she was done, but until last week she came out and did for us every day; we both felt bad and promised to stay in touch, but, you know. So Merrill promised to keep an eye on me and him, she said if Father got bad, all I had to do was call her. As if! She was never home. OK, after that one time she said, If you can't reach me and you won't call the cops, go straight to the ER, the X-ray will help us in court. Or get the whole thing on the answering machine: evidence! All we have to do is play it back for the cops and Judge Brock. They'll give me custody for sure, and that's a promise.

All I had to do was pick up that phone. Like I would do that. He's my fucking father, yo.

I begged her to stay back at the house along with me but she said, I can't be that person and when I said, What person, she just teared up and said, “It's hard to explain.” If he was messing with her she wouldn't tell, at the time I was too little and stupid to know.

Shit hey, I could of showed her how to bring down a man twice her size, I learned that in the Koro Ishi, we trained for worse things back in the dojo. I could of showed her, but, shit, I was never sure that what I think is what she really meant. Listen, Merrill ran out on me back then, so what if she was crying when she did it, I'm not showing her shit. Then her and that Rawson took off from here like shit sliding down a shingle last night, and if you think I'm over it, well, fuck you.

If there was anything in this place sharper than a spork, I would slash all her shit to ribbons, starting with the white fluffyruffle curtains and the flibberty quilt on the flat, empty bed in her dead white bedroom.

Fuck that shit, I'm not staying here just because they said. My man Rawson came on to me all man to man, like, “We're in this together,” and I was so stupid that I thought he actually gave a crap.

If he gave a crap, they'd be back by now.

Unless.

Get out!
Unless!
No way. I'm not going there.

It's cold and lonely and hungry as hell in here, plus, in another minute that sun will pop up outside like a great flaming ostrich egg and if I try to go home, I'll be fried like pork sausage before I can make it, which …

Why would I go back there?

That isn't home. It's just another place with Father in it. Our first night, when her and Ray Powell shut me and Father in together and walked away, I thought, At least this one is clean. I thought that
clean
meant it would be better, but except for the extreme silence, which was a ginormous load off after all the ranting, oh right, and the no whiskey, Father is pretty much the same. He quit talking and he doesn't hit anymore. He doesn't even get mad, but it's all backed up inside that big white head of his, and I think he's fixing to blow.

The minute they shut the door on us he went all still and glassy-eyed. He's spent all day and half the night in that tombstone chair ever since, staring into the shiny white tabletop and puking up words nonstop, but so low that I can't exactly make them out. He probably
looks
reformed or whatever from being in there with nothing to drink but milk or water and nobody but me to push around, but he could just as easily rear back and rip my ears off. All the old poison's still in there. It, like,
compressed
in his belly and his chest and it's filling him up 'til there's noplace left for it to go but OUT. Fuck yes I am scared of him.

I can't stay here, but no way am I going back there.

Wait.

There's Ray. Thank God there's always Ray.

I'll go to Ray's. Me and Rawson that
I thought was my friend
followed him home the night my smartass new best friend dropped his phone and we cut and ran. Ray came around the corner and scooped it up just as we went around the other end, so we laid back and followed him home. We were almost there when Rawson mumbled words I didn't get and we had to turn back, but I think I can find the place.

Rawson, you never know, but you can always count on Ray Powell. Him and me, we'll find Merrill and when we do, boy, she'd better have a fucking good excuse. OK, at least he'll have food. Plus, guys like Ray always get their phone or computer first because they're so important; he'll have one, if who or whatever's doing this to us is handing them out.

It takes way too long to find Ray's place, these fucking white boxes all look alike. It's scary outside and cold as fuck, which it always is until the sun starts up and like to roasts you on a spit. I have to hurry! I go running along, running along, searching for the one thing that makes Ray's house different,
he leaves his shutters open
,
like: nothing to be afraid of, nothing to hide,
so I'll know it when I …

Holy fuck!

One of those front doors bangs wide—
Ray's door!
It's like a smack to the head. Then a long and terrible noise blows out of the house in a mess of words. Words come rolling down the steps like rocks in an avalanche, and it stops me cold. It's Father, bawling like Jonah, right after the whale yacked him up. My fucking father shoots out of Ray's front door, whiter than death and shivering in his dead white scrubs which … Which!

There's a great big monstrous
splotch
on the front of his scrubs. Fuck, is that blood?

When he sees me he lunges down the steps and smashes into me, going, “Don't go in there,” as he shoves me back and back, all the way back down that walk leading away from the house. “Don't go in there, in the name of God!”

Fuck!
“What is it, Father,
stop that!
Father, what?”

He won't stop shoving and he won't say. “Bad, Edward. It's bad.”

“What's wrong, what's wrong?” I need to see, I'm scared to see, I don't want to know, I'm slobbering-crazy because there's something terrible in there and I don't know what. “Ray? What is it? Where's Ray?”

He plants his big, flat hand in my chest like a
STOP
sign. “You don't want to know!”

My heart shrivels up. “Did you hurt him?”

Dead eyes, the father looks at me with round, dead eyes. “No.”

But he knows something I don't know, and I want to kill him dead. I'm not asking, I'm telling.
“What did you do to him.”

“No.” He keeps pushing me back, back out into the street, and for the first time ever he isn't shitty or pissed off at me, he's something worse, that I don't know the name of. “Just. No.”

I run at the old bastard yelling “Shut up,” because I don't want to hear, I'm flat-out begging because I don't want to know, “Shut up, shut up, I need to know!”

“No,” he says, and after all that, Father is so quiet that it scares the crap out of me. “You don't.”

And I can't help it, I go, “You fucking motherfucking son of a fucking fartface fucking fuck…” It just comes pouring out; I hate him so hard that I run out of words because I don't know how it happened and I don't know who did it, but my friend Ray's still in there, and he can't help anybody now.

I choke on clots of muck, I cough them up and I stumble. Father grabs me by the hoodie and yanks me back on my feet. I'm like to strangle and too fucked up to fight. At least I don't cry.

Then OMG Father, the great white Moses of Kraven island, Father turns into the great white Avenger. He shoves me with one fist jammed in the back of my neck, so I stumble down the street while he steams along until finally he whips me around and drags me instead. Then he goes running up front walks, yanking me up the steps while he pounds on doors to wake up the living, roaring to raise the dead. “Out, God damn you. Emergency!”

“Let go. You're scaring me!”

No way. Everything my father is, everything he kept backed up inside him from the day his so-called
people
turned against him until today, rolls up in his throat and explodes into the street and I get that he'll do anything to get them back.

“Out,” he screams. “Out, in the name of Ray Powell, come out!”

After weeks of silence my father is larger than life and bellowing like eight hundred trumpets, all Noah and Moses and every one of the Avengers on a stick, with me bumping along behind him like a stuffed toy, all hurt and no bones. Everything he had backed up inside him crashes and pours out in a massive, supercharged rant. It won't matter how hard I kick at his ankles or try to wrestle out of the iron claw, he is monumental, and I can't stop him. It's awful and kind of like,
regal
. Like there are minions with drums and trumpets ahead of him, clearing the way.